Post-mortem
studies of MS lesions show a close spatial relationship to parenchymal veins.
In vivo study of this has previously been limited by the difficulties in
demonstrating both lesions and veins on a single MR image. Recently, we have
shown that T2*-weighted MRI at 7T enables simultaneous visualisation of both
structures, and found that 82% of white-matter MS lesions contained a
detectable vein. Here, we predict optimal scanning parameters for increasing
the sensitivity of vessel detection and reducing the inherent bias towards
detection of veins with particular orientations.